~ sunday january 20 2002

~ Unlike some people who work in the audio field, I am not one to fetishize microphones.

I make an exception for the Sennheiser 421, the sexiest microphone in the world.


Last year, Becka Barker shot a video for an A/V song entitled "I Stole You A Sennheiser." Here it is in Quicktime format.

~ avstole.mov (10MB)

~ monday january 14 2002 1:30AM

~ Hey. Here's a little video shot I just shot on Gottingen Street, out the doorway of the studio. The music is "Bleeding Tracks," an instrumental from the first A/V disc. Hope you like it.

~ avbleed.mov (3.1MB Quicktime)




~ thursday january 10 2002

~ Terry always tells me to keep the front door locked when I'm hanging out at the studio. Usually I do but sometimes I don't.

I was working in the control room the other day when a fellow came strolling right in with a cardboard box under his arm. He was one of those travelling salesmen types that we've been seeing lately, up and down Gottingen Street. I met him at the door of the control room. He briefly explained the purpose of his visit.

"Thanks, but I don't think I'm really interested in buying anything today," I said.

"Maybe you will be, when you see what I have to offer," he said. "May I set my box down?"

He perched the box on a drum stool and started pulling out his wares, giving me a little spiel about each one. I found his manner to be overbearing and a little annoying.

He was selling ratchet sets ("Sorry--don't have a use for that") and children's colouring books ("Mmm--very nice") and little aluminum cans that turned out to have wristwatches in them.

I had work to do, but as is often the case with annoying people, my annoyance turned to amusement. I started to do what I often do with pompous types, and that is... make fun of them. He was going on and on about this watch, "water resistant up to 300 metres" and so on, when I blurted out, "Man, that's really ugly."

The guy reacted as if he'd been slapped. "Thank you for your patronage," he replied. He started packing up his stuff without saying anything. I didn't say anything either.

"So should I just take my ugly watch, and get out of here?" he said. It seems I had broken through his bluff salesman's exterior to a place of real bitterness. I shrugged one shoulder and said "Good luck..." Sometimes I don't process sarcasm very well. His reaction had surprised me.

It was awkward. I tried to decide if I should ignore him and get back to work, or see him to the door, or try to make a joke to ease the tension. Partly I wondered if it was all just some salesman's ploy, to make me feel apologetic and buy something out of pity. "Sorry for interrupting your day," he muttered. I watched him carry his box out the front door.

Well, I guess it must be a crappy job, walking around all day taking guff from heartless idiots like me.

~ I was at the studio very late that same night. As I was about to leave, I unlocked the front door to change the garbage, then went back inside to shut off all the lights and whatnot.

When I came back out front, fresh footprints led to the door. Terry's ghetto blaster was missing from the front desk. I said, "Shit."

I stepped out onto the sidewalk on Gottingen and looked up and down the street. No one in sight and I'm thinking, "Terry is going to kill me."

Just then a cop van goes driving past. Seeing a confused-looking man standing on Gottingen Street in the middle of the night, the cops slowed down. I waved them over and explained what just happened.

A cop came into the studio and I pointed out the footprints and the empty space on the desk. "Guy's probably long gone by now," I said. The officer said they'd keep an eye out for anything suspicious-looking. And they drove away.

Three minutes later they drove back and the cop got out of the van with Terry's ghettoblaster in his hand.

"Where'd you find it?" I ask as he handed it over.

"We found it attached to a body," the cop said. He jerked his thumb back towards the paddy wagon. "Guy said he found it on the sidewalk, but the bottom of it wasn't even wet."

The only issue was that I needed some way of proving the machine was indeed ours. For one thing, I had originally told them the brand was Sanyo, when it was actually a Koss.

So I pressed eject on one of the decks and pulled out a cassette. "I believe you will find that this cassette has the sound of my voice on it," I said.

"Thanks, I'll take that," said the cop, and confiscated the tape as evidence.

I sure hope the police are enjoying those A/V demos.

~ I have more footage coming from the New Seen Fest last weekend. I got a few shots of Lance Bowness and the Residence, who were nothing like what I'd been told. They are, in fact, a keyboard-playing, cross-dressing, heavily-made-up, full-on new-wave band. Good for them I say.

Another show-stopper that I'm sorry I missed was Flesh Made To Suffer, the latest vehicle for Morgan Carpenter's painfully abused vocal cords (photo via halifaxlocals). At least I got to go to Food Not Bombs the next day and make "Squash Made To Suffer" jokes.

And then I got to slip away from the vegetarian social club and go home and fry up some bird... flesh made for supper, arrrrwk.


~ monday 7 january 2002

~ As of now, you can click on that little heart at the top of the page, and it will actually go somewhere useful. It's Captain Philly's Treasure Chest. Chock full of video and mp3s. Arrrr, booty.


~ sunday 6 january 2002

~ So. Today was going to be my big stay-at-home day, clean the house, do laundry, fun stuff like that. Now here it is nearly midnight. I've been in the studio all day. I'm really hungry, but I'll just have to eat breakbeats for supper.

~ Here's a little track I worked on today:

~ desoto.mp3.

Oooh drum&bass. I'll finish it tomorrow when I get my hearing back. My ears have past the point of fatigue, and I am in no position to make critical judgments.

~ Since you're listening to mp3s, you might as well check out the devilfish as well.

~ This is what else I did today... worked with Terry on the dubplate cutter. It's almost ready to start making some plates. Here's a shot of Terry with the platter assembly:


"Rewind selecta..."

~ Some of the video footage from the show is so funny, I'll have to post some more of it. I noticed something at the very end of the clip I posted the other day: a hand reaching in from the crowd to tweak the modulation wheel of the Yamaha synth... I believe that is my roommate Gerry, getting his paws all over my science. "Koo?"



~ friday 5 january 2002

~ Just got back from the show. Here's a quick little video of me performing "Target Breakdown of Halifax Cannons" whilst scotch-taped to XEdgeAlX.

~ avtarget.mov (1.6MB Quicktime). "Sprawled on your back," this time I changed "Someday" to "Subway" for reasons that will become obvious.

Get Quicktime


~ thursday 4 january 2002


~ Got a cold. I was sitting at this computer doing backups of old sessions, and then I went over and flopped down on the studio couch and I said, quote, "Fuck."

~ Speaking of the f-word. According to my referrer stats, some person out there arrived at my website as a result of typing "fuck winter" into the Google search engine. Hello and welcome, kindred spirit.

~ Sleazy referral statistics are probably old hat to Web veterans, but it's still a big novelty to me. Here are a few more phrases that were typed into search engines that resulted in a visit to swordfight.org:

"chicks making out"
"hot girls making out with each other"
"kissing and making out"
"making out and kissing"
"fake moustaches"

I hope I managed to satisfy all your... prurient interests.

~ I'm going to make a recipe page written by people who can't cook. I'm a bachelor, I love to eat and have a bigger appetite than anyone I know, but cooking bugs me. So I have one or two things that I just make all the time. It's pathetic but funny. If you're like me, and you have one or two meals that you survive on, send in the instructions and I'll put together the ultimate slack-ass recipe book.

Good thing I enjoy the single life.

~ A/V plays Friday night at the Pavilion, come out and dance with me. I promise I won't try to duct tape you to a chair, unless you're into that sort of thing, I know I am, bring your own tape.


~ wednesday 2 january 2002


~ I wrote a bunch of stuff yesterday in a moment of weakness, but I hid it all away because it's just embarrassing. Oh the melodrama. "A long thin needle pierces my brain, which pops like a balloon and flies around the room emitting a farting sound." Ha!


~ tuesday, january 1 2002


~ Happy freakin' new year. It's whatever o'clock it is, in the morning. I'm continuing a bad habit of updating the website while drunk. OK, right here, right now, New Year's resolutions: No more drunken website updates (after today). Cut down on chocolate. Quit scaling images in HTML. And finally, stain my hands with the blood of my enemies.

That should do it, check back in a year to find out how I did.

~ 2002. We'll see about this 2002 business.

~ Played at the Khyber tonight and what mayhem, as Gerry ran wild with the packing tape and taped me to a chair in the middle of a song. This is revenge for what I did to Peaches at the Marquee. See, I was looking for a volunteer to tape to the chair and then tickle into submission during "Target Breakdown of Halifax Cannons" but instead I somehow found myself rudely seated with many many layers of tape wrapped around me and dragged down onto the dancefloor and tipped over. I changed "Sprawled on your back on the hood of your car" to "Taped to a chair on the stage of the Khyber" or some such thing, and howled away during the chorus, "Scotch tape! Scotch tape!"

~ I was pushing my very heavy shopping cart straight up the Sackville Street hill when a cop cruised up behind me and hit his siren for a second when he was two feet behind me. This is revenge on me for performing "I Escaped For Six Weeks" and dedicating it to "the fucking pigs."

~ Yes, I have this theory, now, I don't believe in karma or fate or any of that mystical bullshit, but fortune's wheel... the tendency of situations to become their opposite. All those little vengeances. Also thinking about how last year started off with the kind of debauchery that legends are made of; but I seem to be kicking off 2002 with a period of dark celibacy. I still love Halifax but I'm feeling kind of moody about it. Perhaps what I really want is simply not to be found here.

If you believe that all situations become their opposite, it keeps you from becoming too happy or too depressed. For depression, substitute "patience." For happiness, substitute "wisdom" (or "cynicism" as some people call it).

~ Got to the studio too late; the gates were locked, the party was over. Very sorry I missed it. Loaded in gear, and the place looked crazy. Bottles everywhere, snack bowls, cans and cups, drinks spilled on the carpet. The decks were still set up. It looked like a party was still going on... except the place was empty and silent. I'm in here now and I find it kind of spooky.

~ Hey Pirate Club people. My email has been busted because excite.com when bankrupt or some such crap, it turns out none of the invitations I sent out for tonight's show ever actually arrived. Apparently they'll have it all sorted out in the next few days, but for most of the past week I've been unable to get at that mail, or to read my own darn mailing list. Arrrr. Well, please write to me at this address: philip[at]swordfight[dot]org. Cheerio.

~ Oh by the way, Hey Clown Pants! #15 is now out. It's the "Chick Noodle" issue, pick it up at one of the usual spots and read all about my roommate Sara's new noodle.


~ friday december 21 2001


~ Hi, just got back from a l'il tour. Catching up on the e-mail. Give me a couple days.

Friendly messages seem to be outnumbering the hate mail. Fabulous.

~ I'm not actually getting sued by NASCAD™, which means they might let me in to play another dance in the New Year. Brace yourselves for more electro-art mayhem!

~ I've started work on the new A/V disc. Walked around the streets of Mmmontreal writing a new record in my head. It's not going to have any songs about sex on it, cuz people just don't understand... I think this is going to be a concept album about bank robbery.

~ "Truth about Santa Claus debunks Santa God. God evolves from Santa."

These words of seasonal wisdom brought to you by the world-famous Gene Ray of the recently updated timecube.com. Turns out those ignorant cowards at MIT are finally going to allow Gene to give a seminar on his world-famous timecube theories. "Your God is invited to attend and a chair will be prepared."

~ Confidential to the "Sauna Stalker"-- Your kind words are very flattering, but I'm going to tell you the same thing I told Exclaim Magazine: I really, really like women.